Child's Eyes
by Vara
Summary: COMPLETE. An AU take on my idea of where a certain phrase came from. Sabertooth centered, but long ago.


**Title:** Child's Eyes

**Genre:** Angsty-ish.

**Rating: PG-13.** Cussing and general adult themes like abuse and suicide, and revenge.

**Disclaimer**: I own only the ideas (and Frangi) and I make no money from this piece of writing.

**Authoress's note:** Ok, I think it's Marvel that owns Sabertooth...see how unconnected to this fandom I am? This is so pathetic of me! I can only excuse this by saying that I saw lots of the cartoon thingys and read several of the comics and talked with some people that I considered freaks.

It's just an idea I had because Sabertooth's use of the word "frail" seems meaningful. If that's been covered in the comics then just let me dream on ok?

When they had first met she had smiled broadly and introduced herself pronouncing her name very carefully. "I'm Frangi." Quickly she had explained, with the superiority that only a ten-year-old can manage, "My parents made it up, my dad is a professor. It's based on the word fran-gi-ble, that means frail. I was really sick when I was born."

A little overwhelmed he smiled hesitantly. "My name is Creed. My mother says I'm cursed."

"Would you like to play?"

"Sure."

With wide blue eyes he had absorbed her name and the story, but his six-year-old mouth couldn't handle the odd word, so he called her 'Frail' and she thought that was fine.

Frail was his first and really only friend in the new neighbourhood; she never teased him about his teeth or his fingernails. All of the pretty yards with toys in the grass and laughing children running between sandboxes and swing sets were places he wasn't allowed to go, but he could wait outside for Frail to come out and play.

He noticed that Frail's house was shedding its paint, just like his new house. Sometimes, when he waited for her to come out he could hear her father and mother yelling, just like his parents. And sometimes she didn't want to run or pretend, sometimes she just stayed quiet and cried. Just like him.

They made a clubhouse in the woods and when his mother decided to throw out his old torn pants he saved them so that Frail could have something other than a dress to wear when they played in the forest. Girls could climb trees a lot better when they had pants.

Standing on the porch of Frail's house he swallowed and knocked again. Her father opened the door this time, he smelled a lot like the way his own father smelled when he came home angry. Beer.

"Well?!"

"Can I play with Frail, sir?" He couldn't believe that he had actually asked. But now that he had, he waited for an answer. The man was scary, but he was Frail's father.

"The useless bitch is up in her room, go find her if you can. But then get the hell out of my house."

He didn't need to search; even without any of the lights on he could smell her. There were tears and fear, his fists balled up and his stomach clenched. "Frail," he called softly. "Frail, come play..." it was all he could think of to make things better.

"You go and play outside." She hugged him and then pushed him toward the door. "I'll come out later."

She didn't.

He watched her house for hours, then he went home for dinner. In bed he had a sudden idea- maybe she had gone to their secret fort! He dressed and slipped out of the house without even making the floorboards creak.

Running through the bushes and trees in the dark was easy, the moon was bright enough for his eyes...but Frail could never see as well as he could. She would be alone in the dark and probably scared.

He stopped at the edge of the clearing, she had come this way, he could smell her. But something was wrong. He could also smell something his mother used to clean the floors with. Why would Frail be cleaning the floor of their clubhouse? It was dirt.

Walking much more carefully he entered the clubhouse and stopped just inside the door. Frail was sitting in the corner and she had spilled whatever she had been drinking. But he knew what she had been drinking. All the way back to her house he tried to not cry.

It took a long time to get her parents up, and a long time to get them to stop yelling and threatening him with the police. When they finally heard what he was saying Frail's mother called the doctor and her father grabbed his arm so hard that tears burned in his eyes.

"What did you do to her you hooligan- you freak?!" the man demanded while hurting him more. "Where did you take my daughter?!"

He watched as Frail was bundled into a blanket and taken to the doctor, her father was the quiet sort of angry now.

Three days later he walked up the front steps of Frail's house again. Her father stumbled and swore as he came to answer the door. He couldn't ask, the man was looking at him and he couldn't ask about his friend. He couldn't smell her in the house either.

The man suddebnly recognised him and a nasty smile twisted his face. "Get out of here, boy. Clear off or I'll call the cops on, so help me. Damn kids' got no respect now a days."

"Please, Sir." He was shaking inside but he tried to be calm outside, like he did with his own father. "Is Frail better yet?"

The man stepped back and was closing the door when he changed his mind and spat one final hateful reply. "She played wit' you a lo' didn' she." It wasn't a question and he nodded only because he didn't know what it was if it wasn't really a question. "If she had real frien's she wouldn' 'ave killed herself."

He ran from the house even before the door slammed shut. Frail had left him. Because they hadn't really been friends. The man was drunk but he made sense, to a child's eyes. If she really had been his friend then she wouldn't have left him alone!

It didn't take too many years' passage for every person who betrayed him to become 'frail'. Everyone would betray him eventually, everyone was a frail.


End file.
